The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
My beloved Tucson Festival of Books folks can’t possibly be struggling to wrangle volunteers. Take it from this TFOB veteran, no one could ever have as much fun as a TFOB volunteer. Or as much kettle corn.
Here are seven good reasons for you to volunteer:
1. Kettle corn.
2. Two days surrounded by 1,687,345,007,456 handheld wireless devices called books. I can smell the pulp. I’m high on ink already.
3. The chance to meet the big-shot authors you thought you would never get to meet in a zillion years. There are all kinds of ways volunteers can meet their favorite ink slingers, ranging from driving, herding, hosting or, heck, just click here to see: https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?action=form&form=volunteer
4. You get to spend a Spring weekend in Tucson’s central park, the most beautiful campus on earth, the University of Arizona.
5. The chance to meet me. Experience unforgettable disappointment! Odds are good you’ll run into me there, pretending to skim literary masterpieces, gorging kettle corn. I heard a guy walking away say to his wife, “Not what I expected. He looks like a Sun City silver alert crossed with a hobbit.”
6. Grab the coolest T-shirts in the world designed by the amazing, gifted artist, Chiara Bautista; shirts that years from now an appraiser on “Antiques Roadshow, the 2035 Edition” will value at a zillion crypto coins.
7. Romance. You might be as lucky as I was to meet your life partner at the book festival. Here are the killer pickup lines I used to snare my bibliophile: “You read? Huh! Me, too! Want to go to my place to see my signed first edition ’Hellboy’ comics? No? I may be out-of-print, but my dust jacket’s clean. Want to see if the movie is as good as the book you’re looking at? No? Care for some Kettle corn with the Kingsolver and Kafka you got in your mitts there?”
First time I volunteered, I met Mark Twain. I was sent to the train depot to pick him up. I was thrilled. “Mr. Twain! On behalf of the Tucson Festival of Books let me say, ’Welcome to Tucson!’ It’s a real honor to meet you.”
“I’m right sorrowful to disappoint you, but Mr. Twain couldn’t make it. He sends his best regards, and me, in his place.”
“Who are you, mister?”
“Samuel Clemens.”
He autographed my buckboard.
I am not the first person in this valley to volunteer his time to the festival.
According to esteemed TFOB historian, and handsome pith helmet model, Bruce Dingus, the earliest book festival in this valley, hosted by the Hohokam in 1121, featured three picture rocks, roasted kettle-maize and a petroglyph signing that was canceled when the author was mauled by a cougar.
The first book festival hosted by the Spaniards, La Fiesta de los Libros, held at the base of Sentinel Peak in 1774, featured one author, Presidio Comandante Neto Juan Perez Raul Aguirre Romero “Danielito” Portillo, who moderated a panel discussion about his self-published journal “Por el amor de Dios, Sácame de este Infierno” which roughly translates to “For the Love of God Get me Out of this Hellhole.”
This week I spoke to saloonkeeper, and diarist, George Hand, who at 193 years of age remembers the early years of the modern-day Tucson Festival of Books.
“March. 1884. Spent the night in the red-light district. Woke up hungover. Got drunk. Attended the hanging of a horse thief. Then I moseyed over to the ‘Tucson Festival of Book.’ They only had one book, my book, ‘The Whiskey and Soiled Dove Diet: George Hand’s Secret to a long life in Tucson.’ Ever read it?”
“I only read top-flight literature like ‘Fifty Shades of Gray: A guide to Sun City’s finer Hair Salons’ or ‘Hellboy’ comics.”
“That book festival was I where I met Edna Brenda Escalante Gabriela Pennington Valenzuela Viner.”
Edna Brenda Escalante Gabriela Pennington Valenzuela Viner, was the original founder of the Tucson Festival of Books and the great-great-great-grandmother of Brenda Viner who, with her husband, male bow-tie model, Bill Viner, are the team behind the modern-day Tucson Festival of Books. Edna Brenda Escalante Gabriela Pennington Valenzuela Viner, pioneer, librarian, and frontierswoman, arrived in Tucson, with herbiest friend Guillermo Viner, a bow-tie salesman from Kansas City, in 1870, with nothing but a Conestoga wagon packed with hundreds of books and bags of kettle corn kernels waiting to be popped.
The rest is history.
That’s the best part of volunteering at the book festival. The stories and the storytellers and the tales you’ll be able to tell about one amazing weekend in March, March 4th and 5th, when you were a part of the amazing Tucson Festival of Books.
Did I mention the kettle corn?
The actor and author answered questions following his panel at the Tucson Festival of Books, including some written by Odenkirk himself.
